Alan Ritchson's War Machine Feels Like An Unofficial Prequel To A Forgotten Sci-Fi Movie

This post contains spoilers for "War Machine."

"War Machine" is a Netflix hit that stars Alan Ritchson facing off against a giant alien tank before heading off to take out a whole horde of extra-terrestrial invaders. What many viewers might not have noticed, however, is that the film works surprisingly well as a prequel to 2011's "Battle: Los Angeles."

With "Reacher" season 3 breaking a huge Prime Video record, it's safe to say that Ritchson's series has solidified itself as one of the most reliably popular in the streaming sphere. Ever since the first season proved successful, Ritchson has been showing up in plenty of non-"Reacher" roles that are notably more high-profile than his previous projects. Sadly, none of them have yet established him as a true movie star, and Ritchson's recent Prime Video action movie "Playdate" was a critical flop. Now, however, he's turned in a solid actioner that has thus far proved extremely popular on Netflix and managed a solid 67% critic score on Rotten Tomatoes.

The sci-fi film is directed, co-produced, and co-written by Patrick Hughes of "The Expendables 3" and "The Hitman's Bodyguard" fame. It sees Ritchson play a soldier and US Army Ranger hopeful who, during a training exercise, finds himself in a fight for survival against a hi-tech walking alien tank. Unfortunately, it turns out this is just one of several such machines; the film ends with Ritchson and the U.S. military heading out to protect Earth from this new threat in what could easily be the perfect setup for "Battle: Los Angeles."

Formulaic though it may be at times, "War Machine" is a spectacle worth watching on Netflix. It sees Alan Ritchson play an Army Staff Sergeant who signs up to become an Army Ranger and is assigned a number, 81, which effectively serves as his name throughout. During training, however, 81 and a team of Ranger hopefuls find themselves stranded in the wilderness alongside a giant extra-terrestrial robot that looks like a cross between the Hunter-Killer tanks from the "Terminator" franchise and ED-209 from "Robocop."

The film then follows beats that should be familiar to any fan of John McTiernan's classic "Predator," with the soldiers slowly being taken out by this formidable alien force. Ritchson's hero eventually manages to triumph over the giant robot using a construction vehicle and tons of tiny rocks. But we soon learn that this was just one of thousands of alien invaders and that Earth is under a full-scale attack. The film ends with 81 jumping on a chopper and heading back out to battle as a newly-appointed Ranger. All of this could easily be the ideal lead-in to "Battle: Los Angeles."

That 2011 sci-fi action film was directed by Jonathan Liebesman, who went on to direct Ritchson in the 2014 "Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles" reboot (which, as it happens, Ritchson hated making). It starred Aaron Eckhart as a Marine staff sergeant who leads a platoon tasked with defending Los Angeles from an alien invasion. Much like with "War Machine," Liebesman's film plays with the same level of immediacy, beginning with the invasion already in progress and even ending in a similar fashion with the remaining soldiers going back out to war.

In "War Machine," we learn that the alien invaders arrived via what was thought to be an asteroid which broke up prior to entry, but turned out to be a cluster of advanced machines. In "Battle: Los Angeles," the titular city similarly wakes up to reports of a meteor shower which turns out to be a horde of giant mechanical aliens. After several major cities fall to the invaders, it's up to Aaron Eckhart's Staff Sergeant Michael Nantz and his fellow soldiers to secure the City of Angels. That's not an easy job, however, as the alien tech in this movie ranges from mechas like the tank in "War Machine" to spacecraft that even Alan Ritchson would struggle to take on.

With the movie beginning just as the alien invasion gets underway, it feels like it could neatly slot into the timeline established in "War Machine." The basic premise of meteors that turn out to be invading alien ships is essentially the same as in Ritchson's movie, and taken as a sequel, "Battle: Los Angeles" could easily be the same story told from a West Coast perspective.

The film wasn't exactly one of the greatest sci-fi films of the 21st century, but it did gross a healthy $212 million on a budget of $70 million. The reviews weren't exactly stellar, but back in 2011 Netflix was not what it is today. Had the film debuted as a streaming movie in a media-sphere long dominated by sub-par streaming slop, it might have been better received. Perhaps now is the time to retcon the movie as a sequel to "War Machine" and kick off a new streaming universe.